eikoh hosoe is undoubtedly among the most important masters
of photography since world war II. this exhibition is the largest
retrospective of this japanese master in europe and is fully
supported by the artist himself.

eikoh hosoe was born in yonezawa, yamagata prefecture in 1933
and was brought up in tokyo. at age 17, he decided to become a
photographer. he graduated from tokyo college of photography in
1951 and first exhibited in a one-man show in 1956;
since then, for almost half a century, he has been producing
epoch-making works and has established himself as an
internationally acclaimed photographer.
he soon abandoned a documentary style for bold images utilizing
mythology, metaphor, and theatrical impulses.
hosoe has been a professor of photography at tokyo institute of
polytechnics since 1975 and has taught many photography
workshops in europe and in the u.s.

---otoko to onna / man and woman
in 1960 hosoe released 'man and woman', in which the human body
was turned into a naked object, vividly depicting the drama of the
rivalry between the two sexes on an equal basis.

---ba-ra-kei / ordeal by roses
in 1963, hosoe published a book of photographs entitled 'barakei'
(ordeal by roses), in which a baroque-like world of aestheticism
was structured with novelist and provocateur yukio mishima as the
subject (and with the founder of the butoh dance movement
tatsumi hijikata).
mishima admired hosoe's work and was happy to surrender his
muscular body to be immortalized by hosoe's genius.
'before hosoe's camera,' mishima wrote, 'I soon realized that my
own spirit, the workings of my mind, had become totally redundant.
it was an exhilarating experience, a state of affairs I had long
dreamed of.' this work won international fame.
before publication of the second issue, in november 1970,
mishima wrote ' I will never admit the decay of the flesh.' -
a few weeks before his death by seppukucommits ritual suicide
(thesebook were published in 1963 and 1971 by shueisha).
hosoe was bombarded with requests for photographs of mishima,
but refused to relinquish them for fear that the photos would be
taken out of context. the dark dreamlike quality of these images
of mishima foreshadowed the writer's suicide.

see more

---hoyo / embrace
(which is a more abstract version of otoko to onna.)
during the same period, hosoe's work also underwent transfomation.
to begin with, 'embrace', his book published in 1971, once again
focused on the dialogue between men and women and extracted
the essence of life by cleverly abstracting the flesh.
the images are erotic, but not affectionate and show physical angst,
the struggle of the genders. hoses camera never captures the bodies
from a dominant angle,therefore, the series of works in this exhibition
are not merely expressing the bodies of the opposite sex, but are
depicting the discovery of the equal and diverse relationships,
such as the dialogue, the opposition, ...

---riturn to hiroshima
hosoe was greatly influenced by the political climate of his childhood.
he was only 12 years old when hiroshima was destroyed.
in the late sixties, there was little world interest in what the first atomic
bomb had done to the city and its people. at that time he felt a
responsibility to record what they witnessed there. the result of
his endeavors was the book 'a place called hiroshima',
publisher: kodansha international.see more

---gaudí no uchu / the universe of gaudi
from 1976 to 1984 he created series of photographs of
the architecture of gaudi;
which is published in the book 'the universe of gaudi'.